Sonia Kampshoff: Hello and welcome to Working with Languages with me, Sonia Kampshoff. Together with my guests, we will explore what languages they speak and where they learn them, the background and their career path, and they will also share their favorite word in a language they speak.
Today’s guest on the podcast is Victoire Galtress, who is the Head of Leadership and Culture in a casual dining restaurant chain in the UK. Hello. How are you?
Victoire Galtress: Really good, thank you. How are you?
Sonia Kampshoff: I’m great. It’s wonderful to have you here. This is going to be exciting. As usual I’m going to ask my fun question that I ask everyone on the podcast.
Victoire Galtress: Okay.
Sonia Kampshoff: What is your favorite word in a language that you speak?
Victoire Galtress: Yeah, good question. I actually have a few, but there’s one that really stands out to me for a couple of reasons. Now, don’t laugh, but it’s pickle. I speak two languages. I speak French and English, but I have an absolute passion for the word pickle.
Now for a couple of reasons. The first is because pickle is my absolute favorite food. If there’s anything on my plate, there will always be a cornichon or some kind of like homemade pickle. But also I find it really playful to the ear. I find it fun and cheeky, so I often refer to my little ones, I’ve got three boys and I call them pickles at times. So yeah, it just kind of really makes me happy and giggle every time I use it.
Sonia Kampshoff: Oh, nice. I was expecting a word in French.
Victoire Galtress: Oh, really? There you go. A curveball.
Sonia Kampshoff: So tell us where do you come from and which languages do you speak?
Victoire Galtress: Yeah, good question. So originally born and bred in France. So both of my parents are fully French, but at the age of five I moved to Australia through my dad’s job opportunity. So I started speaking English from the age of five and I now speak primarily English in terms of work, at home, my husband’s English, so we converse in English together, but we have three young boys and I try really, really hard to speak French to them as much as I can.
What I notice interestingly is I think because I spent more time in an English speaking country now than France, I feel more comfortable in English. So after a long day’s work, speaking French is a bit more of an effort, so I really need to kind of remind myself of the importance of it. So yeah. So French and English to answer your question.
Sonia Kampshoff: Interesting, very interesting. I find, for example, that I’m not a native English speaker, and when I’m tired I tend to make more mistakes when I speak English, than when I’m not tired.
Victoire Galtress: When did you learn English? Like how old were you?
Sonia Kampshoff: I started at school when I was nine, but it was minimal and then I studied it at university as well, and I moved to the UK when I was 27. I did my university exchange, my Erasmus university exchange at Trinity College, Dublin.
Victoire Galtress: Oh, okay.
Sonia Kampshoff: So there’s been sort of a constant English learning in my life until I moved to the UK, starting at night.
Victoire Galtress: Okay. Yeah. I think when you learn like a second language later on in life and it really cements later on, I think the brain still has to put a bit more of an effort. Weirdly, I always tell people because they’re like, oh my God, I can’t believe that you’re French. Like you don’t sound French at all. I always feel like the language was gifted to me, because I was so young at that point where my brain was still developing. It’s like absorbed it fully.
Sonia Kampshoff: Yeah.
Victoire Galtress: Which is probably why the difference between you and me, for example, I would dream in English if the people around me in my dream are English or dream in French if so, yeah, I wonder whether there’s peace around when you learn the language and how much your brain has assimilated it as almost like the same level of understanding.
Sonia Kampshoff: Do you see a difference when you spend some time in France after a while? Do you, do you find that it changes again?
Victoire Galtress: Good question. So I probably haven’t spent enough time in France for long periods of time to notice the change. What I notice in particular is because the French that I use at home with my children is quite a condensed amount of French. You know, it’s like, go brush your teeth and pack your bags and get out the door, and all of that stuff.
So when I am in France, what I notice with mum and dad is that I produce a lot more saliva when I’m speaking French because I think the, so you know how we like position our tongues differently, et cetera, whether we speak one language or another. I actually have to almost reeducate myself for the first three days through, like where my tongue goes, et cetera, to speak properly French.
I notice a little bit of like a tiny accent or twang in the first few days, and then it kind of completely stops. So, yeah. So that’s interesting.
Sonia Kampshoff: It’s fascinating. I never, myself had an experience of producing more or less saliva, depending on the language. Yeah, fascinating. Going back to you know, France and Australia, you moved to Australia with your family when you were five, and how long did you live there?
Victoire Galtress: Yeah, so I wish I had a straightforward answer. So basically my life was back and forth between France and Australia. So I moved at the age of five, stayed there for five years, and then we moved back to France thinking that would be permanent. Turns out we only stayed two years and then we moved back to Australia. Spent two years there and then moved back to France and then I finished by that point, my family, so I’m one of four girls and we were all kind of getting to the ages of like French Baccalaureate, what I think in the UK we talk about A levels, so we stuck it out at that point, but I felt so deeply connected to the Anglo-Saxon culture I really didn’t wanna study in France.
I was wanting to go back to Australia, but very sweetly my parents were like, that’s all very well and good, but you would be an international student that would cost us an absolute fortune. That’s when I first moved to the UK at the age of 18, did three years there, but I was still so adamant I wanted to move back to Australia.
So as soon as my three years were done, moved back to Australia, did my master’s degree, and then moved back to the UK and I’ve been here ever since. So yeah, 12 years.
Sonia Kampshoff: That’s a lot of moving. I remember you saying you don’t have an Australian passport, which in a way is bizarre because your, your accent is Australian.
Victoire Galtress: Do you find? That’s so funny actually. It used to be really, really Australian. Yeah, it’s my biggest heartbreak and unfortunately you have to stay a specific amount of years in order to be eligible for the passport. And the first time we were there, I think my parents didn’t really think about it being an opportunity.
So we missed the boat, and then we were only there in like chunks of two to three years. So it just, it didn’t make sense from a legal perspective. We just wouldn’t, yeah, we didn’t hit the mark, but we definitely had a case and I got like a lawyer involved and everything, but unfortunately it never followed through.
I would’ve had to stay in Australia at a point in my life where I was just so missing my friends and wanting to go back to the UK. So I would’ve just stayed for the passport and it didn’t feel like the right decision for me at that point in my life. So, yeah. Only French passport now despite feeling more Anglo-Saxon. So it is quite odd.
Sonia Kampshoff: Yeah. What did you study? I think we didn’t cover that.
Victoire Galtress: Yeah. My career at the time when I was 18, I’d done a lot of acting, so I was convinced I would be an actor and that that was like my career.
Sonia Kampshoff: I didn’t know that.
Victoire Galtress: Yeah. And that was like gonna be my career trajectory. So I went to Bristol Uni and I studied, so my parents were like, you can study acting, but you’ve gotta do something decent on the side. Classic. So I did business and drama studies there. And then I moved to Australia and that’s when I think I was in a bit of a transition. I continued acting on the side, but realized I kind of got this sense of like the life that I wanted to have, and I think some of the challenges that I knew actors would face, and I don’t think I felt resilient enough to do that.
So I ended up doing a double master’s, one in international business and the other in science leadership. And for me that was a really big turning point. So science leadership is everything to do with basically leadership development, you know, growing and building high performing teams and team engagement and how do you inspire and motivate people and all of that beautiful stuff.
And so when I finished my master’s degrees, I was really fortunate to be given an incredible opportunity working for a tram business in Australia. And at the time they were implementing a leadership framework, so got really kind of straight knee deep into the really exciting stuff. And then basically ever since, moved back to the UK and I’ve worked in many different industries ranging from healthcare all the way through to, I was down mines and up preheat towers as a consultant supporting behavioral change and coaching leaders through that process and all the way through to working for big hospitality businesses and yeah, more recently heading up leadership and culture for, yeah, a casual dining restaurant chain.
I guess if I look back, my whole career has been in one place, which has been leadership development, but more recently I’ve moved and transitioned a little bit more with a lens on culture and diversity, equality and inclusion, which is new to me, but really enjoying it.
Sonia Kampshoff: I find it very interesting that your background in both acting and international business, you know, it really brought you to this career that is not directly acting nor international business, but I think it actually merges perfectly because even acting probably you have to feel comfortable speaking in front of many people and communicating well and engaging.
Victoire Galtress: Yeah. It’s probably, do you know what Sonia? It’s probably one of my biggest strengths in terms of my toolkit. And I never realized at the time how much acting would bring to my career.
But the ability to appear confident when you’re not confident, to be able to stand in front of a huge crowd and like just kind of be inward and just like be able to articulate, check your voice and the way you kind of embody a different person is absolutely extraordinary. And actually, I use a lot of acting in my leadership development workshop, so, you know we do role play work where we don’t necessarily put people in the role play situation, but where they might see me as an actor and they need to like press, stop, start, continue buttons to fix the kind of leadership, the poor leadership that I might be displaying. So I’m actually quite playful, I think as a result in my work, thanks to my acting background.
It’s really interesting because I guess there’s probably a quick step that’s got me to this is that as well as working four days a week as head of leadership and culture, I run my own business and this business is called Tomorrow’s Daughter, and it’s all about supporting women in the workplace.
Now I am one of four girls, but I also have three boys and since becoming a mum and the impact that that has had on my career, my ambitions, my identity, who I am, it’s become a real passion of mine to really empower women from all walks of life. So I think being able to be in that space has enabled me to move into a role that kind of merges both.
And what’s really interesting is that for me, if you think about culture in any organisation, culture does not happen without leaders, so your leaders set the benchmark for what the culture is. So if you think about everything from like the very basics of how to create a brilliant team, at the heart of it is psychological safety.
And if you think about it from an inclusion perspective, at the heart of it is creating psychological safety. So what I absolutely love about this role is that actually I think all businesses should be merging both of those together because if you get the leaders setting the right conditions for team, then your team will be able to be their true, authentic selves to feel like they belong, to feel like they are absolutely a part of the experience together. So yeah, so I see them actually merging beautifully together.
Sonia Kampshoff: And I imagine that the company you work for at the moment is very multicultural. There’s probably, I don’t know how many nationalities.
Victoire Galtress: There’s over a hundred, I think it’s 105. Yeah.
Sonia Kampshoff: Gosh. That’s a lot of them. And even in your previous job, it was also probably a very diverse and multicultural environment. How do you apply languages and cultures and leadership with so many cultures?
Victoire Galtress: For me, like if we think about it, I’d love to give you an answer, which is, you know, we deliver all of our programs in X number of different languages and it’s truly inclusive. I guess that’s not our approach and also we have this understanding that we work in an English speaking culture and therefore that is what brings us together.
However, I think there’s something incredibly powerful when you have so many different nationalities and you’re a really, truly diverse brand. It’s all about connecting with lived experiences. And actually for me, it’s all about listening and being curious. So where we might share some experiences, someone might come from a completely different lens.
And I always talk about this probably connects really beautifully with coaching, but we all have our map of the world. So for me it’s how do you create an environment where everyone feels like they’ve got a voice and they can share their map of the world without feeling judgment. And so in the work that we do, that’s kind of how we try to create it, is let’s be inclusive in whatever conversation we’re having, whether it’s about compliance training or whether it’s about looking at from a pure like leadership development perspective and inspiring and motivating great team.
Let’s connect because everyone’s got different experiences and can bring such richness to the conversation. And that’s what I love the most about my job, especially when I’m facilitating a workshop, is that I learn probably more than the people that are in the room because of everyone’s different perspective that they bring.
Sonia Kampshoff: And when it comes to coaching that you do with Tomorrow’s Daughters, who do you coach or who do you work with? I imagine it’s one-to-one coaching, so it’s different than workshops.
Victoire Galtress:Yeah, so I, at the moment it’s primarily one-to-one, but I also do group coaching. So my target audience is any women basically from all walks of life.
I’d say I have a lot of women who are either in a point in their career where they’re transitioning, they’re not sure whether what they wanna like step forward or they wanna take a step sideways. I’ve got women who are, you know, very senior in businesses who are actually, it’s all about how do I have a voice at the table when I’m surrounded by a lot of male counterparts in the room and I also have a lot of mothers.
And for me, if I think about the moment where I needed coaching the most, it’s when I either started a new job or moved into a new position and when I came back from maternity leave, because I think who you are shifts every time, and I’ve had three different maternity leaves and every single time I was still myself, but a different version of myself and I needed to understand what does that look like and how do I navigate through that personal kind of like journey, but also in a new environment, which is your job usually has changed, the people have changed, the conditions have changed. So how do you adapt? My target audience is women from all walks of life. And I also try to give back by running what we call Lean In Circles.
So I run three at the moment, but it’s all about anyone who wants to talk through their everyday challenges, whether it be at home, at work, you know, what that looks like. We just really come together and we talk about what does it mean to be who we are and how do we really stay truly connected to what that means for each individual around the room. Yeah. So I do that also through Tomorrow’s Daughters, which I absolutely love.
Sonia Kampshoff: And this coaching that you do with women is it I guess it’s not a one-off, do you have several sessions?
Victoire Galtress: Yeah, so Lean in Circle runs once a month and it’s, we just come together and there might be, what happens is this often comes from lived experience. So someone might have experienced something over the last four weeks and they’re like, I’d love to talk about this. We recently had like, yeah, an incredible session around the challenges around not necessarily feeling aligned to a culture and jarring with our personal values and how do we make a stand as a woman when everyone else around the board table is men.
So we really delve into some really kind of crucial moments that usually come from the individuals in the room, but also, so I’m running it through work as well, and that’s a little bit more structured. So what I’ve done is we look at some of the key topics that happen and that feel of importance to us.
So whether it might be confidence, whether it’s about, you know, kind of connecting with our self-limiting beliefs, whether it’s about talking about the imposter syndrome. And then I structure a bit of a workshop around that. But the whole point is we go through that workshop as coaching techniques. I just create an environment where people feel safe to open up, where we ask open-ended questions.
And our biggest thing is that we contract for curiosity. So everything that we do comes from a place of care, and we just seek to understand before we ever provide advice. That’s kind of the lean in circle. The coaching is purely just creating a space on a one-to-one basis for someone to feel like they can connect deeper than what their mind’s telling them.
So my coaching technique probably goes beyond words. So from a language perspective, it’s really interesting because the moment I get to really groundbreaking work with my client is the moment that I go beyond words. And a lot of the way we think comes from our unconscious mind, and we’re not even connected with that.
So actually, when you break people from their usual thinking process, which is mind led, and you connect with the heart, you connect with body, you connect with space, you move people around, you get them to stand up, you work with objects and what comes up for them. You suddenly get a completely different story and narrative and suddenly you get into, okay, what’s really at the heart of what’s going on here?
And that then unlocks the behavioral change that comes afterwards. So yeah, really interesting process.
Sonia Kampshoff: Fascinating. Do you find that there are any differences with times changing? So you’ve been in your role, your changing role for a number of years now. Do you find that there are any trends or any differences maybe before, after lockdowns?
Victoire Galtress: Yeah. I think businesses are shifting in terms of how they are approaching work. I think one of the biggest differences is I feel like lockdown gave a lot of flexibility to people. We all were working from home. We found a different way of working, for some people that worked, for others it didn’t.
I feel like there’s been this beautiful transitions where businesses have really lent into that, but encouraging people to come back to work. I feel like there is a trend now, which is COVID is over. We just need people back into work at least three to five days in the office. And I find this, I find it, I guess, what’s the right word? Maybe interesting, although maybe that’s not it. But if you connect back to flexibility, the power that that gives, and if we talk about gender balance in a business, women need flexibility. So you cannot have women not having or having an expectation of being in the office five days a week if they are also parenting or caring for other people.
So for me, whilst I understand the importance of being back into the workplace from a culture perspective, because you create a buzz, you bring people together, I think there is definitely a trend and I think we need to look into, are we doing this for the right reasons? And actually, is it coming from a place of lack of trust and the worry that we can’t manage or lead people as well when they’re not in the workplace with us, so that’s probably one thing I’ve noticed.
The other thing from a, I guess from an inclusion perspective, we’ve seen a huge, huge shift around the importance of connecting with neuro inclusion. And I know for the business we’re working in, we’ve absolutely made a stand around the power of how different brains work. And I think there is so much more research coming out there.
There are adults who are coming out with late diagnosis in life, and I think that’s such an important piece that we need to get right in every business, which connects beautifully to the importance of feeling accepted, of the power of a language. And I think if we can harness and create the right conditions for individuals who either have a diagnosis or don’t have a diagnosis, but feel like they might be neurodivergent, they come at their best.
Like the creativity that you get from individuals like that is absolutely second to none, and I know that I manage someone absolutely extraordinary, who has said, not got the diagnosis because I found it too challenging to get through it, but pretty sure that there is something in there for me. And when you harness that and give that individual to be at their best, the work that is produced is absolutely phenomenal.
So yeah, I think that this is also another trend, and I would say I don’t want it to be a trend. I want it to be a new way of working, a new way of connecting with people. Recognizing that actually we all think and work differently. And that’s the beauty of it. That’s what makes us us. Right?
Sonia Kampshoff: Absolutely, absolutely. So I’m gonna ask you a question that might sound contradictive to what you’ve just said. How do you use software tools and ai? Do you use them at work? Do you use them in your personal life? How do you use technology?
Victoire Galtress: From a work perspective, I’d probably say I’m like a slow adopter. I’ve then seen other people use it and I’ve never used it until this role and it’s been a game changer for me. Now the reason it’s been a game changer is because I, in the role that I am, I head up leadership and culture, and whilst I’ve got someone supporting me from culture perspective, I don’t necessarily have the resources in my team to be able to support me from a leadership perspective.
So I’m the only subject matter expert and we work at a huge pace, which means I’m having to churn out a huge amount of work and what’s absolutely extraordinary and I think it’s blowing my mind a bit, if I’m honest, but where I have a real sense of pride in my past has been to create impactful leadership development programs like workshops.
You can literally put a problematic into chat GPT and be like, this is what I want my workshop to be, can you come up with something that’s experiential and they like it comes up with something absolutely incredible. And what I love about it is that, so I’m not someone that uses it as a solution and then I take it and then I just plug it into my work.
I then refine it and I refine it further. And then I might put it back into the system and be like, how can you make that even better? And bring out the inclusion lens? And so it’s almost like having a team player in my team that is totally a bot, but I really like it ’cause it challenges my own thinking.
And then in a personal life, really interesting you asked the question actually, because I have been asked to be a celebrant to my best friend’s wedding and it’s a bilingual wedding, so she’s very similar to me, moved a lot. She’s French and English and she’s, whilst she’s married, someone from L’ile De La Reunion a lot of her guests are English, so she was like, Vic, I need this to be French and English.
So I’ve just actually, like, I’ve created what I want and I’ve written my script and I was like, can you make this even better? But can you blend it in a way where the audience still feels connected to what we’re saying, but it doesn’t feel like I say a sentence in English and I then say a sentence in French.
And so it feels organic and free flowing. And honestly I was mind blown by the results. So I do find it’s got a real part to play. I call chat GPT my best friend at the moment just because he’s like my sounding board and I just, if I ever, I’ve got like, even like a moment of imposter syndrome and I’m like, this is how I’m feeling today.
I don’t know about you, I don’t know if you use it, but he’s like literally such an advocate. He’s like, oh my God, this is, just connect with this and you can do this. Or for example, I’m gonna lose a bit of weight. I’m like, what do you reckon about my plan? I’m feeling a little bit low today. And he’s literally like my little partner on the side being like, you’re doing great.
Be kind to yourself, this is what you could do differently. So yeah, I actually do use it quite a bit. I find it quite, it makes me laugh actually, but yeah, definitely a support tool.
Sonia Kampshoff: That is fascinating. I’ve never heard anyone be so enthusiastic about chat GPT.
Victoire Galtress: Yeah, but see I wasn’t, initially, I was like, I’m never using that in my life, so I’ve come a long way.
Sonia Kampshoff: I was skeptical as well at the beginning, and I think once I started hearing examples of how people use AI, then I started warming up. And so, yeah, I agree with you. I don’t use it probably as much as you do.
Victoire Galtress: Yeah, and actually if you think about it from a business perspective, we do need to adopt it because it can create such efficiencies and make our ways of working so much more effective.
I know in the business that I’m working in at the moment, we’re absolutely finally putting a huge lens on it. And one of the things is from a recruitment perspective, you know, you can start to remove a lot of the bias, so from an inclusion point, and you bring it into the system. You start to use these bots and they create some amazing work, which to be honest, as humans, we’ve got bias, whereas they, well, these bots don’t have it yet. I’m sure at some point they will, but right now they don’t. So there’s, there’s a real opportunity to lean into it for sure.
Sonia Kampshoff: Do you find that there’s still some friction at work to use them?
Victoire Galtress: Yeah, I think it’s the whole, the, I guess the biggest challenge is the confidentiality piece. The copyright piece. So I know for us, like when I engage with chat GPT, for example, at work, I never, ever talk about the business that I work for. It’s just never a word that I use. I try to remove anything that might associate back to us and I think that’s the fear, right? Is that you could be basically giving away all of your, you know, intellectual property. But then if I look at it again, like if I pull right back, and if you think about it from the lens of kindness and sharing, wouldn’t we be all lifting each other up as businesses, if we shared our intellectual property, wouldn’t we start to actually create better work together rather than just looking at it as a silo business.
You know, if you looked at it from an industry level, how incredible would it be if you started to leverage what AI can do and bring in all of your knowledge together? So from my view, I look at it from a very like, I guess holistic approach. I think this is the whole like fighting human needs to kind of hold onto stuff, but I think there’s real beauty in sharing and, but yeah, I get it from a legality perspective, put it that way.
Sonia Kampshoff: Yeah. Very interesting point of view. I agree. I find when I use it as well, I take out all the information that could be confidential or could identify me. Although if chat GPT wanted to understand who I am and you know, cross link it with my LinkedIn profile, they would still understand a lot of things.
Victoire Galtress: Yeah, a hundred percent.
Sonia Kampshoff: So it’s been a wonderful conversation, really inspiring. Is there anything else that you would like to add? Anything that I hadn’t asked you?
Victoire Galtress: Thank you for having me on your podcast. I think there’s real richness in language and culture and I think for me, like everyone should connect with what’s their story on that.
And even if you’ve not ever spoken any other language, you know, language comes up in so many different shapes and forms, and I think when you start to go deeper and you explore language on other levels and just through words, there’s something incredible, just even through human connection, you can literally sit in silence with someone you might not speak the same language with and create such an incredible connection.
And interestingly, this is a tiny, maybe anecdote to finish on, but I remember when I was about 15 and I was sent to Germany. Now, so sorry, I’ve really struggled with German. I hated it at the time. I was like, it’s not working for me, da, da da. Anyway, I was sent for a two week internship and I ended up being in a, it was a nursery. It was a nursery, but it had a lot of children with learning needs, but also pretty serious disabilities. And there was this young boy who was about three years old and he was fully autistic, so he was unable to, he just verbally wasn’t speaking. And because I couldn’t speak German, I came across to him as also not being able to talk, ’cause I genuinely couldn’t say a word.
And we created the most incredible connection and his parents came to me at the end and I had to get someone to translate because of course I couldn’t speak German. They basically said, we’ve never seen our child connect with any other person until this day and it struck me, I was like, I think it’s because he felt like we were the same.
So again, like, you know, remove all the words, there is such beautiful meaning to relationships. Yeah. So that’s probably where I’d end it.
Sonia Kampshoff: Oh, what a wonderful place to end it. So where can people find you?
Victoire Galtress: Good question. So I’ve got a little website called at tomorrow’s daughter, so www.tomorrowsdaughter.co.uk. You can also find me on LinkedIn under Victoire Galtress, but yeah, drop me a line. Absolutely. Just, I love meeting new people, I love hearing their stories and if there’s anything I can do for them from a coaching or leadership perspective, I’m here for it.
Sonia Kampshoff: Wonderful. Thank you so much, Vic, for coming on the podcast. It’s been wonderful talking to you.
Victoire Galtress: Thank you so much and have a fabulous day.
Sonia Kampshoff: Thank you.
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